1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a device and a method for remotely controlling a computer system operable in a graphic user interface (GUI) environment.
2. Related Art
Generally, remote control of a variety of electronic equipments such as televisions, video cassette tape recorders (VCR), compact-disk (CD) players, cassette players, radios and other consumer electronic items has been extremely popular for allowing users to control the electronic equipments more conveniently from a remote distance.
Recently, remote control technique has been extended even to computer systems in which users are permitted to control operation of the computer systems remotely. A remote control receiver is connected to a micro-computer of the contemporary computer system to receive a remote control signal transmitted from a remote control transmitter in order to drive an application software for performing an intended function. In case where the remote control function is supported by existing application software, however, the remote control must communicate with a specific remote control firmware. For this reason, the existing firmware must be specific to the remote control function, or an application software must be changed whenever a communication module is changed. In addition, when an application software supports the remote control function without using an universal remote control interface, the application software must be configured in its entirety. Further, in case where the remote control function communicates directly with the micro-computer that is not different from a firmware, interfacing with other application software modules has been difficult, and the remote control function may not respond properly. That is, in contrast to a keyboard serving as an input unit of the computer system, the remote control function is operated only when an application software supporting the remote control function is driven. Furthermore, the implementation of remote control function is fixed to a combination of input keys on the keyboard. For this reason, in case where the combined input keys have already been used as hot keys for specific functions in application software, the remote control function supported by the application software may conflict with the specific functions.